Rastafarians Face Eviction From Pinnacle

JAMAICAN-BORN Leonard Howell joined Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association after he migrated to the United States at a young age. He had some differences with fellow Garveyites, but like Garvey in 1928, Howell was deported to Jamaica in 1932.

In 1933, Howell began preaching about the rise and importance of Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie I, ne Ras Tafari Makkonnen, widely regarded the ‘Black Messiah’. His messages brought him some amount of popularity, and he was to become the first leader of the Ras Tafari movement, the ‘first Rasta’ some writers put it. Read more>